OpenAI Acquires Statsig, Names Indian-Origin Vijaye Raji as CTO of Apps

Statsig, a product testing business, has been bought by OpenAI. Vijaye Raji, the startup’s Indian-origin founder and CEO, has also been named the new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of apps by the Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence (AI) business. Raji will handle key systems, infrastructure, and product lines in his new position as product engineer for ChatGPT and Codex.

Who is Vijaye Raji? Indian-Origin CTO of Apps

Raji’s background as a founder and his ten years as the head of consumer engineering at Meta, the company claims, will help OpenAI grow its business and transform its research into “intuitive, safe, and useful tools”. He will answer directly to OpenAI’s CEO of apps, Fidji Simo. Statsig is a platform that offers real-time decision-making, feature flagging, and A/B testing. Raji and his colleagues founded Statsig with an emphasis on data-driven product development and quick testing.

Company to Operate Independently at its Seattle Office

OpenAI will hire Statsig staff after the acquisition. The business will continue to serve its current clientele and run autonomously out of its Seattle headquarters. To ensure continuity for clients, any upcoming integration would be handled gradually. Regulatory approval and other standard closing requirements apply to the purchase.

OpenAI already uses Statsig’s platform to facilitate experimentation and product development. It is anticipated that bringing it in-house will increase these capabilities throughout OpenAI’s Applications organisation.

Statements from Fidji Simo and Vijaye Raji

“Vijaye has a remarkable record of building new consumer and B2B products and systems at scale,” Simo wrote in a blog post discussing Raji’s appointment. “His leadership will help transform that advancement into safe applications that give people a variety of new tools to improve their lives, help businesses become more influential, and enable developers to create faster and better products. He is joining at a time when our models are opening up completely new ways to build.” Simo added.

“Being the CTO of Applications at OpenAI is a fantastic opportunity for me to apply my experience building consumer and corporate products to a cause I firmly believe in: developing AI in ways that are dependable, capable of tackling challenging issues, and genuinely helpful to people everywhere. I’ve had a really fulfilling career with Statsig, which has brought me to this point and strengthened my belief that we will keep assisting teams in producing better software every day,” Raji stated.